ARLINGTON, Texas — Angels manager Ron Washington said Monday he is recovering from quadruple bypass heart surgery, the first time he has publicly addressed the health issues that have sidelined him since late June.
He made the announcement while visiting the Angels for the first time since the operation eight weeks ago in California. He is not returning to manage this season but hopes to have that opportunity next year.
Washington, at 73 the oldest manager in the majors, was last in the dugout for a 7-3 loss to the New York Yankees on June 19. The following day, the team said Washington was out indefinitely because of health issues after experiencing shortness of breath and appearing fatigued toward the end of that four-game series in New York.
“This happened fast,” Washington said. “I wasn’t feeling very good on our last trip to New York … and I finally decided to go to the trainer and let him see what was going on. My ankles were swollen. And he called the doctors in from New York and they knew right away what was going on, why my fluid was going into my ankles.”
He was cleared by Yankees doctors to fly home with the team and underwent tests after getting back to Southern California. The Angels announced on June 27 that he was going on medical leave for the rest of the season. Washington had surgery three days later.
Washington said the Angels were on a road trip when he was released from the hospital on July 7, so he got clearance to fly home to Texas where his wife could assist him with his recovery.
The well-liked Washington revealed the details of his medical issues before the Angels opened a three-game series in Texas. He plans to continue on to Houston before skipping the final stop on the road trip in Kansas City. Washington hopes to be with the team the rest of the season after the Angels return home.
Washington is the Rangers’ winningest manager with a 664-611 record from 2007 to 2014. He led them to their first two World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011.
After initially returning to Oakland’s organization for two seasons, Washington then was on the Atlanta Braves’ staff from 2017 to 2023 and part of their 2021 World Series championship.
With a young roster after Shohei Ohtani’s departure in free agency and with three-time AL MVP Mike Trout limited to 29 games because of injuries, the Angels went 63-99 last year in Washington’s first season as manager, a franchise record for losses. They were 36-38 before Washington left the dugout this year, and entered Monday night’s game 25-31 with Ray Montgomery filling in for him.
Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, who led them to their first World Series title two seasons ago, is the second-oldest manager in the majors. The four-time World Series champion turned 70 in April.
WASHINGTON — Kilmar Abrego Garcia said he suffered severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation and psychological torture in the notorious El Salvador prison the Trump administration had deported him to in March, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
He said he was kicked and hit so often after arrival that by the following day, he had visible bruises and lumps all over his body. He said he and 20 others were forced to kneel all night long and guards hit anyone who fell.
Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported and became a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The new details of Abrego Garcia’s incarceration in El Salvador were added to a lawsuit against the Trump administration that Abrego Garcia’s wife filed in Maryland federal court after he was deported.
The Trump administration has asked a federal judge in Maryland to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it is now moot because the government returned him to the United States as ordered by the court.
A U.S. immigration judge in 2019 had barred Abrego Garcia from being deported back to his native El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs who had terrorized him and his family. The Trump administration deported him there despite the judge’s 2019 order and later described it as an “administrative error.” Trump and other officials have since doubled down on claims Abrego Garcia was in the MS-13 gang.
On March 15, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador and sent to the country’s mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
In the new court documents, Abrego Garcia said detainees at CECOT “were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.”
He said prison officials told him repeatedly that they would transfer him to cells with people who were gang members who would “tear” him apart. Abrego Garcia said he saw others in nearby cells violently harm each other and heard screams from people throughout the night.
His condition deteriorated and he lost more than 30 pounds in his first two weeks there, he said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador in April. The senator said Abrego Garcia reported he’d been moved from the mega-prison to a detention center with better conditions.
The Trump administration continued to face mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order to return him to the United States. When the U.S. government brought back Abrego Garcia last month, it was to face federal human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time of Abrego Garcia’s return that this “is what American justice looks like.” But Abrego Garcia’s attorneys called the charges “preposterous” and an attempt to justify his mistaken expulsion.
A federal judge in Tennessee has ruled that Abrego Garcia is eligible for release — under certain conditions — as he awaits trial on the criminal charges in Tennessee. But she has kept him in jail for now at the request of his own attorneys over fears that he would be deported again upon release.
Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told The Associated Press last month that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him again.
Separately, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told a federal judge in Maryland last month that the U.S. government plans to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” that isn’t El Salvador. Guynn said there was no timeline for the deportation plans. But Abrego Garcia’s attorneys cited Guynn’s comments as a reason to fear he would be deported “immediately.”
Baumann and Finley write for the Associated Press.
An Army veteran who grew up in Van Nuys and was awarded a Purple Heart self-deported to South Korea this week as he was threatened with being detained and deported by federal immigration forces.
On Monday, veteran Sae Joon Park, who legally immigrated from South Korea when he was seven years old, grew up in Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley and held a green card, flew back to his homeland under threat of deportation at the age of 55. He said he is being forced to leave because of drug convictions nearly two decades ago that he said were a response to the PTSD he suffered after being shot during military action in Panama.
“It’s unbelievable. I’m still in disbelief that this has actually happened,” Park said in a phone interview from Incheon early Wednesday morning. “I know I made my mistakes … but it’s not like I was a violent criminal. It’s not like I’m going around robbing people at gunpoint or hurting anyone. It was self-induced because of the problems I had.”
Sae Joon Park, an Army veteran with a Purple Heart.
(From Sae Joon Park)
Asked to comment on Park, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Park has an “extensive criminal history” and has been given a final removal order, with the option to self-deport.
Park said he suffered from PTSD and addiction in the aftermath of being wounded when he was part of the U.S. forces that invaded Panama in 1989 to depose the nation’s de facto leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.
But now Park, a legal immigrant, is targeted by federal authorities in President Trump’s recent immigration raids that have prompted widespread protests in Los Angeles and across the nation. Federal authorities have arrested more than 1,600 immigrants for deportation in Southern California between June 6 and 22, according to DHS.
A noncitizen is eligible for naturalization if they served honorably in the U.S. military for at least a year. Park served less than a year before he was wounded and honorably discharged.
As of 2021, the Department of Veteran Affairs and DHS are responsible for tracking deported veterans to make sure they still have access to VA benefits.
Park’s parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother immigrated from South Korea to the United States. He followed her a year later. They first lived in Koreatown, moved to Panorama City and then Van Nuys. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in 1988.
Struggling at first to learn English and acclimate with his classmates, he eventually became part of the Southern California skateboarding and surfing scene of the 1980s, which is when television editor Josh Belson met him. They have been close friends ever since.
“He’s always got a smile, a very kind of vivacious energy about him,” said Belson, who attended a nearby high school when they met. “He was the kind of person you wanted to be around.”
After graduating, Park said he wasn’t ready to attend college, so he joined the military.
“The Army provided not only turning me into a man, but also providing me with the GI Bill, so you can go to college later, and they’ll pay for it. And the fact that I did believe in the country, the United States,” he said. “So I felt like I was doing something honorable. I was very proud when I joined the military.”
Park’s platoon was deployed to Panama in late 1989, where he said they experienced a firefight the first night there. The following day, he said he was carrying an M-16 when they raided the house of one of the “witches” Noriega allegedly followed. He said they saw a voodoo worship room with body parts and a cross painted in blood on the floor.
While there, he heard gunfire from the backyard and returned fire. He was shot twice, in his spine and lower left back. The bullet to his spine was partially deflected by his dog tag, which Park believes is the reason he wasn’t paralyzed. A military ambulance was delayed because of the firefight, but a Vietnam veteran who lived nearby rescued him, Park said.
“I just remember I’m just lying in my own pool of blood and just leaking out badly. So he actually went home, got his pickup truck, put me in the back of his pickup truck with two soldiers, and drove me to the hospital,” Park said.
He was then evacuated to an Army hospital in San Antonio. A four-star general awarded him a Purple Heart at his bedside. Then-President George W. Bush visited wounded soldiers there.
Park spent about two weeks there, and then went home for a month or so, until he could walk. His experience resulted in mental issues he didn’t recognize, he said.
“My biggest issue at the time, more than my injuries, was — I didn’t know what it was at the time, nobody did, because there was no such thing as PTSD at the time,” he said. Eventually, “I realized I was suffering from PTSD badly, nightmares every night, severe. I couldn’t hear loud noises, and at that time in L.A., you would hear gunshots every night you left the house, so I was paranoid at all times. And being a man and being a tough guy, I couldn’t share this with anyone.”
Park started self-medicating with marijuana, which he said helped him sleep. But he started doing harder drugs, eventually crack cocaine. He moved to Hawaii after his mother and stepfather’s L.A. store burned during the 1992 riots, and married. After Park and his wife separated, he moved to New York City, where his addiction worsened.
“It got really bad. It just got out of control — every day, every night, all day — just smoking, everything,” Park said.
One night, in the late 2000s, he was meeting his drug dealer at a Taco Bell in Queens when police surrounded his car, and the dealer fled while leaving a large quantity of crack in his glove compartment, Park said.
A judge sent Park to rehab twice, but he said he was not ready to get sober.
“I just couldn’t. I was an addict. It was so hard for me to stay clean. I’d be good for 30 days and relapse,” he said. “I’d be good for 20 days and relapse. It was such a struggle. Finally, the judge told me, ‘Mr. Park, the next time you come into my courtroom with the dirty urine, you’re gonna go to prison.’ So I got scared.”
So Park didn’t return to court, drove to Los Angeles and then returned to Hawaii, skipping bail, which is an aggravated felony.
“I did not know at the time jumping bail was an aggravated felony charge, and combined with my drug use, that’s deportable for someone like me with my green card,” he said.
U.S. Marshals were sent looking for Park, and he said once he heard about this, he turned himself in in August 2009, because he didn’t want to be arrested in front of his two children.
He served two years in prison and said immigration officials detained him for six months after he was released as he fought deportation orders. He was eventually released under “deferred action,” an act of prosecutorial discretion by DHS to put off deportation.
Every year since, Park was required to check in with federal officials and show that he was employed and sober. Meanwhile, he had sole custody of his two children, who are now 28 and 25. He was also caring for his 85-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of dementia.
During his most recent check-in, Park was about to be handcuffed and detained, but immigration agents placed an ankle monitor on him and gave him three weeks to get his affairs in order and self-deport. He is not allowed to return to the United States for 10 years. He worries he will miss his mother’s passing and his daughter’s wedding.
“That’s the biggest part. But … it could be a lot worse too. I look at it that way also,” Park said. “So I’m grateful I made it out of the United States, I guess, without getting detained.”
“I always just assumed a green card, legal residency, is just like having citizenship,” he added. “I just never felt like I had to go get citizenship. And that’s just being honest. As a kid growing up in the United States, I’ve always just thought, hey, I’m a green card holder, a legal resident, I’m just like a citizen.”
His condition has spiraled since then.
“Alright. I’m losing it. Can’t stop crying. I think PTSD kicking in strong,” Park texted Belson on Thursday. “Just want to get back to my family and take care of my mother … I’m a mess.”
Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has reached an agreement with City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson to find the money to reverse the cuts to police hiring made last month by the council.
On Friday, Bass signed the 2025-26 budget approved by the council, which reworked much of her plan for closing a $1-billion shortfall. Among the council’s changes to the mayor’s spending plan was a reduction in the number of police officers hired in the coming fiscal year, which would drop from 480 to 240.
The following day, as part of her signing announcement, the mayor highlighted the separate deal with Harris-Dawson to ensure that “council leadership will identify funds for an additional 240 recruits within 90 days.” The budget year begins July 1.
The money for the additional officers would be allocated within the 90-day deadline, said Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl.
“No one got everything they wanted,” Harris-Dawson said in a statement. “There is still more work ahead, especially our commitment to work with the Mayor to identify the funds for an additional 240 recruits within 90 days.”
Restoring the 240 police recruits would require the council to free up an additional $13.3 million for the coming year. In 2026-27, the cost of those officers — who would be working their first full year — would grow to about $60 million, according to a city estimate.
Bass proposed a budget in April that called for laying off about 1,600 civilian city workers, one-fourth of them at the LAPD. The council voted last month to reduce the layoff number to around 700, in part by scaling back the mayor’s hiring plans at the LAPD and the Los Angeles Fire Department.
During their deliberations, council members said a slowdown in the hiring of police officers would protect the jobs of other workers at the LAPD, including civilian specialists who handle DNA rape kits, fingerprint analysis and other investigative tasks.
Bass, in her statement, thanked the council for “coming together on this deal as we work together to make Los Angeles safer for all.” She said the budget invests in emergency response, homeless services, street repairs, parks, libraries and other programs.
“This budget has been delivered under extremely difficult conditions — uncertainty from Washington, the explosion of liability payments, unexpected rising costs and lower than expected revenues,” she said.
During the budget deliberations, Bass voiced dismay about slowing down recruitment at the LAPD. In recent days, she had weighed whether to veto all or a portion of the budget, which could have led to a messy showdown with the council.
The council voted 12 to 3 to approve the reworked budget proposal last month. Because only 10 votes are needed to override a veto, Bass would have had to secure at least three additional votes in support of her position on police hiring.
Whether Harris-Dawson has the support of his colleagues to find the money — and then spend it on police hiring — is unclear. Unless the city’s labor unions make financial concessions, the council would likely need to either tap the city’s reserve fund or pull money from other spending obligations, such as legal payouts or existing city programs.
The budget provides funding for six classes with up to 40 recruits each at the Police Academy over the coming fiscal year. Bass had originally sought double that number, providing the department with 480 recruits.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who chairs the council’s budget committee, said she shares the mayor’s goal of restoring LAPD recruit classes — and looks forward to “working with her to make it happen.”
“The question has always been how to do it in a way that is fiscally responsible and sustainable,” Yaroslavsky said.
To increase police hiring and eliminate the remaining 700 layoffs, the council will need to turn to the city’s labor unions for additional savings, Yaroslavsky said.
The council’s budget provided enough funding to ensure the LAPD has 8,399 officers by June 30, 2026, the end of the next fiscal year. The $13.3 million sought by Bass would bring the number of officers to more than 8,600.
The LAPD had 8,746 officers in mid-May, down from about 10,000 in 2020, according to department figures.
